UK Soon To Join WTO’s Government Procurement Agreement
On the 7th October 2020, the WTO's Government Procurement Act (GPA) members granted the UK the right to submit its GPA instrument of accession to the Committee in 2021.
This means the UK will join the GPA in its own right once the EU member transition periods ends on 31st December 2020.
What's The WTO Government Procurement Act?
The ...
Finding Beneficiaries of Public Money
By Alex Yeung.
Part 1: The Matching Process
Linking entities is a common theme in procurement data, but it is a significant problem in the UK. The concern with entity matching is the cost of false positives. This issue is particularly stark when finding the beneficiaries of money. The main challenge is that name matching is largely insufficient ...
Can Anyone Do Business With Government?
By Fiona Hunt
It’s understandable that for many SME’s, doing business with government is not high on their prospecting list. In the media, most of the coverage around government suppliers tends to be about big consultancies and major multinational technology companies. It’s understandable then that many smaller businesses would consider becoming a supplier to government highly unlikely.
The ...
New Government Measures Include Social Value in Procurement
In late September 2020, the UK Government released a new plan for delivering greater social value through its procurement processes.
The new measures come into place in January 2021, and have lofty goals including jobs growth, greater prosperity through broad economic growth, and even tackling climate change.
These measures will be introduced through a new model for government ...
Consultancy contracts published
Today we're publishing all of the recent consultancy contracts for the UK. This data is free to download and reuse.
There has been high levels of interest in the roles that larger consultancies are playing in the delivery of the 'Test and Trace' service here in the UK, so we've decided to publish all of the data ...
Opening Covid Contracts
Today we're openly publishing all of the contracts let by UK public sector for medical equipment and protective workwear. This data is free for anyone to download and reuse in their work.
The data we are publishing is selected on the basis of the category codes that are selected by each buyer when they publish details of ...
How Does Procurement Compare By Country?
-Fiona Hunt.
This simple graph gives us a fascinating insight into the respective size of government spending globally. From the recent report by Open Contracting Partnership and Spend Network, on quantifying global spend, this graph illustrates the dominance of the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, and China)when it comes to government spending, making up 40% of annual ...
The little codes that hold our world together
Have you noticed that your email address is completely unique? Its obvious that this would be true, but it bears thinking about. In all the millions and millions of email addresses there isn’t another like yours, if there was another like yours there would be no way for your colleagues and friends to send a note ...
Giving Away Data Makes Business Better
-Ian Makgill
Giving away all your data for free sounds like a bad idea, especially when you're a business whose aim is to sell data.
It sounds counter-intuitive, as if our principles have overridden our ambitions and we're doing something that will ultimately damage us.
We sound like people whose hearts rule their heads.
Nothing could be further from the ...
UK Leading Procurement Transparency Alongside Columbia and Ukraine.
By Fiona Hunt.
The recent report on global government spending by Open Contracting Partnership and Spend Network, brought to light for the first time, the extraordinary size of the global procurement market and, alarmingly, the lack of open contracting.
Of the $13 trillion spent per annum by governments globally, only $362billion (2.8%), is published openly. Imagine the increased ...
What Needs To Happen to Open Public Procurement- Skills
-Ian Makgill, Founder, Spend Network.
Our last post on what needs to happen to open procurement covers the skills you need to maintain a procurement publication service. Governments often focus too much on the technology needed to publish procurement data, ignoring the need to maintain and run the service in the long term.
Once set up, you will ...
What Needs To Happen To Open Public Procurement – Technology
-Ian Makgill, Founder, Spend Network
Another key element to open public procurement is technology. Getting data into the public sphere can often be over complicated, but it needn't be. If you already have a system for collecting data on tenders and contracts, you'll need to talk to your provider about making that data available openly. The main ...
What Needs To Happen to Open Public Procurement- Policy
-Ian Makgill, Founder, Spend Network
There are three basic requirements for implementing a contracting transparency initiative, the first is policy.
Creating new policies is easy, as long as you never have to implement them. Creating a policy that is designed to be implemented is much harder. Fortunately, the Open Contracting Partnership have, yet again, done all the heavy ...
Quantifying Global Public Procurement: Our Methodology
The Open Contracting Report 'Global Procurement Spend', is to our knowledge, the most comprehensive study of global public procurement yet. We are proud to be the data partner for the project, analysing more than 7 million documents to quantify the $12.9trn size of public procurement, globally.
So, you’re probably wondering how we put a number on it?
Our ...
How Transparency Benefits Suppliers
Why suppliers gain from better data on their markets.
-Ian Makgill, Founder, Spend Network.
Better information creates better outcomes for those bidding into a market.
Which is why incumbents have a significant advantage going into a tender: they have more information. This asymmetry of information is a particular problem in public sector markets, where the process for providing bidders ...